WW News Service Digest #233
1) Colombia regime, Pentagon step back from the edge
by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
2) 'Plan Colombia' protest targets Ft. Bragg
by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
3) Is the U.S. economy heading into a recession?
by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
4) Detroit cafeteria workers win contract with community support
by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
5) Boston: 'Jail killer cop!'
by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
6) Mumia Abu-Jamal -- WBAI: The coup on Wall Street
by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Feb. 22, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
COLOMBIA REGIME, PENTAGON STEP BACK FROM THE EDGE
By Andy McInerney
In many ways, the soundtrack to the Feb. 8-9 meetings
between Colombian President Andres Pastrana and
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombian-People's Army (FARC-
EP) Commander in Chief Manuel Marulanda was as telling as
the final communiqué.
As Pastrana entered Los Pozos on Feb. 9, the town in the
cleared dialog zone where talks are taking place, a song by
FARC-EP troubadour Lukas Igurarán played over the
loudspeaker. "Let's go, dear, to Bogotá," the song intoned.
"I want to see the barricades in the barrios and the people
incited. Prepare the dynamite!"
Pastrana and Marulanda announced an agreement on Feb. 9 to
"unfreeze" the talks that have been frozen since November.
The agreement pulls the Colombian ruling class a step away
from the total war that would have opened up if the military
tried to retake the cleared zone.
A key concession by Pastrana's regime was the announcement
of a national commission to investigate the deathsquad
violence in Colombia. Paramilitary units coordinated by the
government armed forces have murdered tens of thousands of
civilians in the last ten years. They are set up to
terrorize Colombia's unions, peasants, students and
community activists.
The FARC-EP froze the talks on Nov. 12 to protest Pastrana's
refusal to dismantle the death squads. Since that date over
200 people have died in death-squad massacres.
While much was made of the inclusion of the topic of a cease-
fire in the new round of talks set to begin on Feb. 14, this
development is presented out of context. The FARC-EP have
always been willing to discuss a cease-fire--in return for
concrete political and military concessions by the Colombian
death-squad regime.
The revolutionaries have categorically refused to discuss
any form of disarmament, calling their arms the guarantee
that any agreement would be carried out.
The FARC-EP and the Colombian government began the current
dialog process in January 1998, after a string of military
and political victories by the FARC-EP. The insurgents have
been able to use the process to advance their demands for a
solution to the social roots of the decades of war in
Colombia.
For this reason, the government has repeatedly tried to
derail the talks. A widening, though still minority, sector
of the Colombian ruling class is openly agitating for an end
to the talks and a new military offensive.
This sector is being encouraged by the $1.3 billion U.S.
military aid package known as Plan Colombia. That package
includes counterinsurgency training, military helicopters
and deadly defoliants. Publicized as an anti-drug package,
Plan Colombia is widely seen as support for the Colombian
government against the revolutionary insurgencies of the
FARC-EP and the National Liberation Army (ELN).
A Feb. 8 report by the military think-tank Stratfor
summarized the quandary for the Colombian elite and their
U.S. backers: "Although it has begun to receive the first
portion of $1.3 billion in U.S. aid, the Colombian army's
30,000 combat troops are not yet capable of defeating the
FARC, which has about half as many fighters but a large
network of civilian supporters. FARC forces also roam freely
over about 40 percent of the country.
"At this point, the army is stretched thin, protecting vital
economic and communications infrastructure--and without the
transport, communications and intelligence necessary to
deploy and engage more mobile guerrilla units.
"In this context, the peace talks are primarily meant to
appease the FARC until the military's capabilities are
enhanced by U.S. aid," the report noted.
The new round of talks will delay any all-out confrontation
between the FARC-EP and government troops--although battles
continue to be fought on a weekly basis. The political
situation will continue to be defined by the talks and their
center of gravity in the cleared zone.
Pastrana's commitment to solving the causes of the war
remains questionable. He has refused to back away from the
Pentagon-sponsored Plan Colombia--the major obstacle to
peace in Colombia today.
The FARC-EP put forward their view on the peace process at
an anti-imperialist conference in Zurich on Jan. 26. "For
the FARC-EP, the quest for peace is not counterposed to the
struggle for great social transformations and the struggle
for power. In Colombia, the struggle for peace is
complemented by the revolutionary struggle. We understand
peace as the building of a new country."
The immediate threat of total war has been avoided--largely
because the Colombian military is not prepared. But the
looming and inevitable conflict between the revolutionary
process in Colombia and the counter-revolutionary U.S.
military intervention cannot be resolved without the defeat
of one side or the other.
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Feb. 22, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
"PLAN COLOMBIA" PROTEST TARGETS FT. BRAGG
By Phil Wilayto
Fayetteville, N.C.
In what organizers said would be the first of many such
actions here, about 150 people came together Feb. 10 to
protest Washington's increasing military intervention in
Colombia. Demonstrators came from North Carolina and beyond.
Fayetteville is home to Ft. Bragg, headquarters for the
Army's Special Forces. The Special Forces has played a key
part in the U.S. intervention in that Latin American
country. And it is key to the Pentagon's $1.3 billion
package of new military support called Plan Colombia.
A highlight of the rally was the reading of a statement from
retired Special Forces Master Sergeant Stan Goff. Goff was
unable to attend because he was out of the country.
Goff is an author and veteran of many Special Forces
campaigns, including a stint in Colombia in the early 1990s.
Goff said he was sent there under the cover of training
members of the Colombian military in drug interdiction. But
all the training was focused on counterinsurgency
techniques.
"The war is about oil," Goff said. He pointed out that
Colombia sits on a vast oil reservoir. He called for an end
to both Plan Colombia and to the "election-stolen, right-
wing, de facto coup regime" in Washington.
Other speakers included Jon Elliston, an author and
journalist with the North Carolina newspaper Independent;
Gail Phares, Southeast regional coordinator for Witness for
Peace, who recently led a protest against Plan Colombia
outside the U.S. Embassy in Bogota; the Rev. Andrew Summers
of Warren Wilson College, who recently visited Colombia;
Meredith Aby of Minneapolis, representing the Colombia
Action Network; and Sue Kelly of the Richmond Action Center,
representing the U.S. Out of Colombia Committee of the
International Action Center. The IAC recently sent a fact-
finding mission to the rebel-held zone in Colombia.
"The U.S. government tells us that Plan Colombia is a war on
drugs," said Kelly. "Well, we know what they mean by that.
We have a war on drugs in this country, a war that has
resulted in a 500-percent increase in the prison population
since 1970--the majority from the Black and Latino
communities. And we still have drugs."
Kelly said the State Department's claim that Plan Colombia
is the brainchild of the Bogota government is a lie. "This
isn't Plan Colombia," she said, "this is Plan Washington,
it's Plan Pentagon, and the goal is to strengthen the
domination of U.S. capital over Latin America."
After the rally, protesters marched a half-mile to the newly-
constructed Army Airborne and Special Operations Museum in
downtown Fayetteville. Among the liveliest of the marchers
were 10 youths from the Charlotte, N.C., organization ARISE.
The group was a local organizing center for the Jan. 20
counter-inaugural protest in Washington.
They chanted: "Resist! Resist! We know that you're pissed!
Fight the capitalists! Resist, resist, resist!"
Today's protest was called by the newly-formed Peace Plan
Colombia, a North Carolina network of anti-war
organizations. Participating organizations were Carolina
Interfaith Taskforce on Central America, Colombia Action
Network, Colombia Media Project, Rainforest Action Network,
Students United for a Responsible Environment, Witness for
Peace Southeast, Veterans for Peace-San Francisco/Bay Area,
November Coalition and the Richmond Action Center.
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Feb. 22, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
IS THE U.S. ECONOMY HEADING INTO A RECESSION ?
By Gary Wilson
[The following is excerpted from a talk given at a Workers
World Party forum in New York on Feb. 9.]
Karl Marx's father reportedly asked him, "If you know so
much about money, how come you never have any?" Sometimes we
hear the same sort of thing today: If Marxists know so much
about the economy, how come they aren't rich?
We hear this when the economy is going up. During boom times
we're told that it will last forever. The capitalists always
think they've found a new way to beat the system and that
the evils of capitalism have been eliminated. But, as night
follows day, an economic bust always comes. And when the
bust comes they are the first ones to pull out copies of
Marx's "Capital" in order to understand what's going on.
Not too long ago a top economic writer for the New Yorker
magazine wrote that the Wall Street economists, who all hate
Marx, are reading Marx to try to understand what's happening
to the economy.
They hate Marx--not because he revealed the real inner
workings of capitalism. They hate Marx because of his
conclusion that there is no way to reform capitalism. It is
a system of exploitation and destruction that can't be
corrected by fixing this or that. The bad parts are built
in. The only fix is to completely get rid of it and replace
it with a system that doesn't require oppression and
exploitation.
But that's getting to the conclusion. Let's look at what's
happening right now.
There have been announcements of thousands and thousands of
layoffs. Some are really big like Chrysler, where 20 percent
of the workforce is losing their jobs. Verizon says it is
eliminating 6,000 jobs. The list goes on and on.
I did a search on the New York Times Web page yesterday and
for that one day there were 29 stories that mentioned
layoffs. About half the companies laying off are dot-com
companies. Two of the stories were about the rising jobless
rate and the increasing number of people filing for
unemployment benefits.
RECESSION WORST FOR WORKERS
The question most workers want answered is: does this mean
that we are going into a recession or even a depression? For
the working class this is a more important question than it
is for the rich. Every recession, every depression is a
disaster for the workers.
So are we going into a depression?
We know that every expansion always ends with a contraction.
So it would be safe to say that there will be a recession
and many of the signs of a recession can already be seen.
So what are these laws and capitalism and what signs can we
see?
The reason that capitalism goes bust, the reason for the
downturns and layoffs, is that there is overproduction.
What did Marx mean when he wrote about overproduction? Some
people think that Marxists are making a moral statement that
there is an excess of material goods and that is why there
is a crisis. But that's not what overproduction is about.
There can be a crisis of overproduction of goods that are
vital for everyday life like food or clothing or housing.
And yet that does not mean that everyone has enough food,
clothing and housing.
Capitalist overproduction isn't about material excesses. The
layoffs at Chrysler aren't happening because there are too
many cars--even if you think that there are too many cars.
If Chrysler isn't able to sell their cars, why don't they
just lower their prices? If they did that they would start
selling a lot more cars. But Chrysler isn't going to do
that.
The reason is, Chrysler isn't producing cars to meet
people's needs. Chrysler doesn't even care if there are 30
million poor people in the U.S.--which there are--many of
whom don't have cars but who need one in order to get to
work. Just making sure that everyone in this country who
needed a car had one could keep every Chrysler worker on the
job and give overtime to all who wanted it.
But Chrysler is producing cars for only one reason: to make
a profit. When a company reaches a crisis of overproduction--
on the business news on TV or in the newspapers they call
overproduction "over capacity"--it means that the company
has produced more goods than it can sell at a profit.
Here's what happens and why the problem is built into
capitalism.
As Marx noted, capitalism is different than any economy that
came before--and from the future socialist economy--because
all commodities produced in a capitalist economy are made to
be sold for money. Before capitalism, anything produced was
made to meet a need.
The possibility of a capitalist crisis comes from the fact
that a commodity may fail to be sold.
Here's the way Marx put it: "A man who has produced does not
have the choice of selling or not selling. He must sell. In
the crisis there arises the very situation in which he
cannot sell or can only sell below the cost price or must
even sell at a positive loss."
You can watch this happening right now. At the top of the
economic boom, businesses are hit with a falling rate of
profit as they cut prices and start to sell at cost or even
below in order to keep customers and protect market share.
But eventually, the falling rate of profit makes itself
felt. Production is halted and layoffs begin. Capitalist
production goes bust, leading to a recession or even
depression.
What Marx showed is that capitalism's boom-bust cycles are
not just imbalances, where there is too much of one thing
and not enough of another. The source of crises is the
profit system itself. As long as production is determined by
profit and not to meet human needs, there will be crises,
recessions and depressions.
The cure, the only way to fix it, is to eliminate production
for profit and replace it with a system based on production
to meet people's needs. That's the part of Marx that the
Wall Streeters don't like and don't want you to know about.
There's another side of capitalism and its crises that
involves what's called globalization these days. That is the
imperialist side of capitalist crises.
Capitalism requires not just profit, but non-stop profit,
not declining profits. And the big capitalists in the U.S.--
the real U.S. ruling class--don't want just regular profits
they demand super-profits. The only way to do that is to
continually expand to take over new markets, to beat out
competitors and take their market share.
Big business in the U.S. is continually expanding, eating up
its competitors, getting bigger and bigger, and expanding
profits to even greater extremes. And big business is also
expanding outside the United States.
This expansion is the other side of the contraction that
comes with recessions and depressions. In fact, the
capitalists believe that continuous expansion will prevent
recessions, which it won't and never has. But the drive to
prevent declining profits and to continue their super-
profits also drives them toward war. This is what's behind
the continuing military buildup, and not any external
threat.
So what do we do about the economic crisis that appears to
be deepening rapidly? As Marxists, as communists, our job is
to first of all use every means we can to expose the lies of
the capitalists. Our first task is to expose capitalism as
the root of the problem.
That's why we must have our own independent media, our own
meetings and rallies, our own Web sites and email lists.
We have a weekly newspaper that shows what's really going on
and reports on struggles that the big business controlled
media never report on. We have to get the paper out more and
to increase its circulation. That is the minimum needed to
counter the propaganda of the capitalist media.
WORKERS DON'T HAVE TO ACCEPT LAYOFFS
In addition, every worker should know that they don't they
don't have to accept layoffs and the hardships of a
recession as inevitable. It is possible to fight back. In
fact, workers have rights, but those rights are being
trampled. But the only way to protect those rights is for
the workers to defend themselves through united action.
Workers can and have organized to defend their right to
their jobs. An outline of how this can be done can be found
in the book "High Tech, Low Pay," which was written by Sam
Marcy, one of the founders of Workers World Party. The book
is available from leftbooks.com, or you can read it on the
Web at the workers.org web site.
I just want to end with a comment on the tax cut plan being
pushed by George Bush. Bush is suggesting that his tax plan
will save the economy from a recession or even a depression.
It's all supposed to be for the good of the people.
Could this possibly be true? As you know in your bones, that
a lot of hogwash. No matter what he may be saying, the tax
cut is really a giveaway to the rich.
This tax cut looks more like a fast move by the rich to make
a grab for the budget surplus before a recession really
hits. That's because when a recession hits, there will be
real pressure on Washington to spend any so-called surplus
on social programs, which will all need to be shored up
because they've all been either cut to the bone or
eliminated altogether.
So what's the conclusion?
As with capitalism, the only real fix for George Bush is to
completely get rid of him and replace him and capitalism
with a system that doesn't require exploitation and wars.
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Feb. 22, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
CAFETERIA WORKERS WIN CONTRACT WITH COMMUNITY SUPPORT
Cafeteria workers at the Detroit phone company--organized
into the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union--have
won their first contract with the community's support.
RWDSU Local 1064 Representative Elena Herrada and President
Keith Phelps thanked Detroit's labor and progressive
community for supporting the struggle of the cafeteria
workers.
In a letter they said: "RWDSU Local 1064 won a contract with
modest wage increase, health-care benefits, sick days and
most importantly, a pension plan. The workers will be able
to receive credit for their past years of service after two
years in the pension fund, which is the centerpiece of this
important victory.
"Without the coalition that supported the crew, this
contract would never have been won."
Nearly three years ago the Ameritech phone conglomerate
contracted out cafeteria services at its downtown skyscraper
and suburban headquarters to Aramark, one of the world's
largest industrial caterers.
The mostly African American women working there--many with
as much as 20 years seniority--had no sick days, no health
insurance and no pension plan. They earned an average of
$6.50 per hour.
This low pay violated Detroit's Living Wage Ordinance that
mandates a minimum of $10.44 per hour for workers without
benefits.
The long fight for this first contract featured many
spirited community/ labor informational picket lines.
--Cheryl LaBash
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Feb. 22, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
"JAIL KILLER COP! COMMUNITY CONTROL OF POLICE"
Their demands for prosecution of a killer cop were ignored
by police brass. So on Feb. 3, 150 angry residents of
Boston's Dorchester neighborhood and their allies marched to
the park where police shot Ricky Bodden in the back of the
head on Dec. 27.
Officer Wilcox, the cop who shot Bodden, said he thought the
man was smoking marijuana with his friends. When Bodden and
a friend ran down the sidewalk, Wilcox shot him squarely in
the back of the neck.
Investigators found no drugs. But police allege Bodden had a
gun in his pocket.
Bodden's brother and sister explained that the family's
extensive investigation of eyewitnesses in their
neighborhood affirms that Bodden never threatened the cop.
Instead, he was executed while running in the opposite
direction of the cop's unconstitutional demand that he
submit to an unwarranted search.
The march was organized by Streets is Watching, a group
formed recently to combat increasing incidences of police
violence and harassment, especially toward youths in
Dorchester, Roxbury and other oppressed neighborhoods.
Streets is Watching demanded prosecution of the killer cop
and a civilian review board for police. City Councilor Chuck
Turner called on the crowd to pack a public hearing he's
called to investigate the killing.
Bob Traynham of the International Action Center charged that
there is "an epidemic of racist police murders in this
country."
Nation of Islam members, Bodden's family and friends,
several clergy and many angry neighborhood youths cried out
"No justice, no peace!" after each speaker denounced racist
killer cops.
by Steven Gillis
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Feb. 22, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
MUMIA ABU-JAMAL FROM DEATH ROW:
"WBAI" THE COUP ON WALL STREET"
By Mumia Abu-Jamal
[Information is the raw material for new ideas;
if you get misinformation, you get some pretty
fu---d-up ideas.
--Eldridge Cleaver, former minister
of information, Black Panther Party]
With late-night lock changes, and a phalanx of security
guards prowling the halls, the coup of WBAI-FM, the flagship
station of the Pacifica Network, has begun.
Popular veterans of the listener-supported station, like
program manager Bernard White and WBAI union shop steward
Sharon Harper (both producers of the morning "Wake Up Call"
show), received letters of termination at their homes
several hours before their shifts were to begin. WBAI
General Manager Valerie Van Isler, who, like White, was a 20-
year vet of the station, was similarly fired by Pacifica,
ostensibly for failing to accept a position at network
headquarters in Washington.
While these firings were attempts to remove, and thereby
install, management personnel, it was also an opening salvo
in a pitched battle designed to silence radical dissent, and
open the airwaves to the corporatization of WBAI.
If you want WBAI to become a nice, sweet, safe alternative,
like NPR, then do nothing. It will happen. If, however, you
want to continue to hear about the struggles of the peoples
of the world for liberty, for life, for dignity, as in East
Timor; or of the noble life and death struggle of the
Zapatistas in the mountains of Mexico; or of cases like the
slaughter of African immigrant Amadou Diallo; or of the
continuing human rights violations occurring every day in
the nation's burgeoning prison-industrial complex, then you
must fight for it, as you would fight for your very life, or
anything dear to you.
The great Frederick Douglass perhaps put it best when he
said, "Without struggle there is no progress." If the
various communities of New York and northern New Jersey
don't struggle for their vision of WBAI-FM, it will be gone.
It's as simple as that.
What's happening at 'BAI was attempted a year ago at KPFA-FM
in San Francisco. The people of the Bay Area rallied in
unprecedented strength--over 10,000 folks at one protest--
and backed the Pacifica board down. Listeners to 'BAI must
do no less!
In theory at least, the airwaves belong to the people. For
the last 40 years, the staff and local management of WBAI
have tried to make that theory in America a reality.
If you are thrilled by the no-holds-barred radio reporting
of "Democracy Now's" Amy Goodman, who is constantly
threatened and harassed by the Pacifica board for her
radical reporting, then fight for her.
For in fighting for her, you fight for the finest traditions
of WBAI, and against the corporationists who want to turn a
national resource into just another commodity.
To keep it raw; to keep it real, you've got to fight for it.
For info contact Concerned Friends of WBAI:
(800) 825-0055; (718) 707-7189; www.savepacifica.net.
Text (c) copyright 2001 by Mumia Abu-Jamal.
All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of the author.
